Era of Good Feelings
The First Party System was built around foreign policy issues that vanished with the defeat of Napoleon and the compromise settlement of the War of 1812. Furthermore, the fears that Federalists were plotting to reintroduce aristocracy dissipated. Thus an "Era of Good Feelings" under James Monroe replaced the high-tension politics of the First Party System about 1816. Personal politics and factional disputes could occasionally still get nasty, but Americans no longer thought of themselves in terms of political parties.
Historians have debated the exact ending of the system. Most concluded it petered out by 1820. The little state of Delaware, largely isolated from the larger political forces controlling the nation, saw the First Party System continue well into the 1820s, with the Federalists occasionally winning some offices. For the rest of the nation, the contributions of the founding fathers of political parties had been completed — and thus it seems symbolic that Adams and Jefferson died on the same day (4 July 1826), even on their deathbeds acknowledging the other's remarkable contributions.
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